Conventionally, a game had a concept of generic players or player slots. These slots may have been referred to generically as “player1” and “player2.” Generic player1 got mapped to one controller when the game started and generic player2 got mapped to another controller when the game started. The mappings were done once at startup and were fixed for the duration of the game. The mappings may have been controlled by users. Changing the mappings required stopping the game experience, terminating a computer process running the game, and starting over. Once the game had started, and the generic player to controller relationship had been established, the game could then ask player1 questions like, “who are you,” “is there a profile you would like to use,” or “are you happy being generic player1?” Only then would the game establish a relationship between generic player1 and a user profile. The user profile could be used to customize the game experience, address billing issues, and facilitate other actions. If a human wanted to use a different controller than the one initially mapped, then the game had to be stopped, exited, and re-launched and a new fixed player-controller relationship established.
FIG. 1 illustrates how conventional systems map a player slot to a controller using a game table 100. FIG. 1 also illustrates how conventional systems map a player slot to a user profile using a user table 110. Both mappings involved the player slot. Both mappings were static and could not be changed without disrupting the gaming experience and terminating a process running the game. Both mappings were done once at game start up.
This conventional one-to-one approach arose because game consoles typically had a concept of a controller and a concept of a player slot and the only way to connect the player slot to the controller was through a sign-in procedure. All actions performed from a controller were associated with the user who entered their information from that controller and the only actions the user could perform were those associated with the controller on which the user signed in.
But computer systems, including game systems, have developed and may allow multiple users to access, sign in, or otherwise interact with the system at the same time with different types of controllers. For example, a single game console may have several controllers that are operably connected to the console, some wired and some wirelessly. Additionally, the game console may allow different players to have different games active at different times and even to come and go from a game. Thus the traditional, fixed, one-to-one relationship between a user and a controller may limit the game experience. This limiting of the experience may extend beyond games and game consoles to other multi-user systems that have multiple input devices.